How many words are in a novel, on average? It’s a question aspiring authors often ask. Book lengths vary widely. Every now and then a true doorstopper is published. Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 (which runs to 928 pages) is one example. Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy (published in 1993) runs to a whopping 1349 pages, with a word count of 591, 552 words. At the other end of the spectrum, Ray Bradbury’s cult classic Fahrenheit 451 has a word count of only 46, 118.
